Penelope Takes the Bow
by Nimbiose
Summary: AU. Of all the Kurosaki children, it is Yuzu who most resembles Masaki, in more ways than one. One-shot.


**Penelope Takes the Bow**

**Disclaimer.** Bleach is not mine.  
**Rating.** T  
**A/N.** i should be working on grad school applications but eh. anyway, it's suggested in the manga that Masaki was somewhat of a prodigy at using her Quincy abilities, though it's unclear whether that's because of her own ability or her status as a pure member (at least until the Hollow incident with Isshin). i took that and used it on Yuzu and it kind of amplified to ridiculous levels. but i had fun writing it so i hope you have fun reading it. also, my classics degree, let me show you it.  
**A/N 2.** any mistakes in continuity or characterization, and in particular in regards to Quincy abilities, are my own, and if you see them please tell me as i had to refresh my memory on Quincy abilities but i fear i might have missed or misunderstood something.

* * *

_In Greek myth and Homer's **Odyssey**, Penelope is the faithful wife of Odysseus who has waited ten years for him to return to their home of Ithaka from the war at Troy (which was another ten years). While Odysseus has been away, it is Penelope who has remained in charge, but has been forced to endure a crowd of suitors who seek to marry her to become king and usurp Odysseus, and have been steadily eating away at her home and patience. She is cunning, however, and has often tricked them, such as by pretending to weave a burial cloth for her father-in-law Laertes and promising to pick a suitor once she's done weaving it. She weaves during the day, and then unweaves it at night. Penelope further proves her cleverness by testing the real Odysseus when he does appear, until she is absolutely sure it is, in fact, her husband. She is held as the epitome of the faithful wife, and an equal in cunning to her husband._

* * *

Yuzu became aware of herself at two, and of the fact that she wasn't entirely normal when she was about five years old. She had thought, for several years, that she was normal, where her brother and twin weren't. Someone had to be normal to even the family out a bit, and she was happy taking that role. She was happy taking a lot of roles, it turned out, as Mom died a few weeks after Yuzu first noticed her not-normalness.

Yuzu thus became the caretaker in their diminished, mourning family. Their father provided for them, Ichigo and Karin protected them, and Yuzu cooked, cleaned and made sure no one worked too hard. Because someone had to fill in the space left behind by Mom, and at five years old, Yuzu stepped in when no one else did.

(None of the Kurosakis realized how strange it was for a child to suddenly be so adept at running a household and still achieving top marks in school, even if it was very basic schooling. They were all too upset, too blinded by their loss to realize the genius child they were harbouring.

A genius that did not limit itself.)

**-o-**

In the stash of belongings left behind by Masaki Kurosaki, the only one Yuzu asks for is her mothers cross-shaped necklace. She is not entirely sure why.

(Her father gives it to her with a strange glint in his eyes, but dismisses the thought almost as soon as it comes, because Yuzu is a girl who has lost her mother and can wear her mother's necklace as a way to get closer to her mother if she likes, and it _doesn't_ have to be related to the Quincy or the Shinigami because of all his kids Yuzu is the least likely to do anything other than wear it.

He is wrong.)

**-o-**

By the time the twins turned ten, Yuzu was the effective commander of the Kurosaki household. She had also had five years of practice ignoring the spirits she could see. Unlike her sister Karin, she never claimed that she could see them, and was so good at ignoring them and hiding herself (unconsciously hiding her _reyryoku_ she would learn) that they never bothered her. Instead, the brunt of dealing with the spirits fell to Ichigo. And life went on.

(Yuzu sometimes swore she saw Dad twitch when a spirit would appear, but she never commented. She had her own secrets, after all.)

**-o-**

A few months before she turned eleven, returning home from grocery shopping, Yuzu encountered a different type of spirit altogether. It was large, and animal-like, with a mask made of bone covering its face. The creature was not looking at her, but at the souls of two children huddled together in fear on the floor.

There was no one else around, and as Yuzu took in the scene before her, frozen in place, the creature opened its mouth, its jaw stretching wider than anything Yuzu had ever seen, and howled.

(To this day, Yuzu doesn't know what prompted her to act, whether it was some bizarre form of self-preservation or protective instinct.)

As the creature advanced on the two terrified souls, Yuzu found herself throwing the apples she had just bought, drawing its attention. It turned its face (and it was really a mask, a mask made of bone and teeth, teeth so very, very sharp and very, very white _the better to eat you with-_) to her instead, and seemed to grin. At a loss now, Yuzu took a step back, before turning and sprinting away.

The creature gave chase. And Yuzu ran, ran away as fast as her legs could carry her, dumping her bag of groceries on the ground because right now nothing was more important than getting to higher ground because higher ground meant-

Yuzu abruptly stops, and makes a left, hiding in an alleyway.

What did higher ground mean? Closing her eyes, the young girl steadied her breathing as she tried to figure out her thought process. Her instincts, or her sixth sense, or _something_, was clearly guiding her to some conclusion, but she didn't know what it was. As she stood in the alleyway catching her breath, Yuzu ran through all the possibilities. Her mind, so attuned to figuring out school work problems and household issues, was reeling at this new situation it found itself in, but it was also flourishing, because there was a plan somewhere in there, an idea of what to do, if only she could harness some type of _power-_

And here she stops. And considers.

If there are spirits, both good and evil, it stands to reason that there is some type of power associated with the spirit. As such, there must be some way for someone to harness that power; because this is the first time she's seen the creature that is currently searching for her.

Yuzu runs through everything she knows about evil spirits – mediums, priests, excorcisms, _think Yuzu think-_

She stops again. Opens eyes she hadn't realized she'd closed, and her hand travels up to the charm around her neck. The one thing she'd asked for of her mother's possessions, and hadn't been quite sure _why_ only that she needed it.

Then she thinks of a channel, or a funnel, or some form or way to amass the energy she's always felt around her and ignored, some way to form it into a weapon perhaps a weapon shaped like a cross, like a-

Yuzu blinks, as a bow made of bright light forms in her hand out of seemingly nothing. She stares openly, amazed at the beautiful shape of light she holds in her hand as if it weighs nothing. It is in this moment, when her guard is down, that the creature finally finds her. With a howl, it swipes a clawed hand at the young girl, who screams as she tries to dive out of the way. Her ankle twists, and Yuzu cries out at the pain, unused to it, as she has never been as rambunctious or active as her siblings.

However, the bow made of light is still in her hands, although it flickered lightly. Gritting her teeth and ignoring how her eyes are watering, unaccustomed to the physical stress her young body is going through, Yuzu turns and takes aim. Taken by complete surprise, the creature barely has time for another howl before an arrow pierces its torso, and it disappears.

As her adrenaline goes down and the tears begin to flow freely, Yuzu gasps out a laugh at her own survival.

It is then that Ishida Ryuuken steps out of the shadows and changes her life forever.

**-o-**

(When she goes home, Yuzu doesn't tell her family that she sprained her ankle fighting off a Hollow, a spirit that has gone bad, or that she was treated to a kiddy version of spirits while Ishida-san bandaged her ankle and chastised her for using her powers in the open (when he found it was the first time she did, he paused momentarily, before remembering Yuzu was Masaki's daughter, and if anyone would have a Quincy prodigy for a kid, it would be his once-betrothed) or that she met Ishida-san at all.

As far as her family knows, she was pushed by a man mugging a ladies purse while walking home, dropped all her groceries, and had a bad fall.)

**-o-**

When Yuzu has been eleven for a handful of months, she begins to notice something is going on with her older brother. It's not just the appearance of Kuchiki Rukia, or his new circle of friends (which includes Ishida-san's son, and this raises flags like nothing else). It is the power that had felt so contained before, now unleashed and free to the world, and it takes everything in Yuzu's power not to stumble or flinch occasionally when she is around him.

When she starts to see him less and less, Yuzu decides to ask Ishida-san, because above all Ichigo is her brother and someone she feels she needs to take care of at all costs because she loves him.

She had been pestering him in her own way since the day they met, appearing at the hospital with patients from their clinic or bringing lunches, claiming to be interested in medicine.

(All the patients say she is a very diligent kid, and are appropriately charmed.

Ishida Ryuuken pretends she doesn't exist and wonders how Masaki has managed to get her daughter to haunt him from beyond the grave. He blames it on Isshin's genes.)

She eventually asks him outright, and all she gets from the man is a grumbled, "Shinigami", before she is shown out the door with only a lollipop for her efforts. She scowls briefly at the lollipop as if it has personally offended her, before shrugging and unwrapping it. If that is all she will get out of him, then she might as well do some research herself.

**-o-**

In the privacy of the library, she looks up everything on Shinigami she can find. As the good student that she is, the librarians don't question her sudden interest, and instead give her free reign. As she studies, she begins to put the pieces together.

If there are souls or spirits hanging around the living, someone obviously has to ferry them over to the other side. There are countless myths about ferrymen, from all sorts of different cultures, so it is not entirely impossible, especially given Yuzu's own experiences. If there are evil spirits or Hollows, she realizes that someone has to deal with them as well. The Shinigami, she rationalizes, must do both.

Of course, this puts forth a new question. If Ishida-san spoke of the Shinigami in such a derogatory, unimpressed tone, what are they?

**-o-**

(When Kurosaki Yuzu first barged into his life, Ryuuken assumed it was a fluke, one last push of Masaki's will and power being passed on to her children. He assumed he would bandage the child up, she would be sufficiently scared, and then never be able or interested to call on her Spirit Weapon again.

Imagine his surprise when the kid hanged on like an unwanted growth, turning up at the hospital asking uncomfortable questions about her brother. He gave her the word 'Shinigami' to get her off his tail, but the kid turned up a week later, determination in her eyes.

He wonder what it says about the situation that Masaki's daughter seems to understand a lot more of what he isn't communicating than his own son ever has.)

**-o-**

Midway through the school year, Yuzu has finally pestered Ishida-san long enough to convince him to train her. This was mostly after a well-placed comment on her part of how she's been practicing calling on the bow of light on her own for sometime, and has gotten quite good at it.

(She had assumed Ishida-san would be alarmed at her practicing doing something that she knew nothing about and that she knew, from experience, was quite destructive.

She was right.)

**-o-**

(Midway through the school year, Yuzu also became a member of the archery club, but no one really took notice, even as they started winning more competitions thanks to her.)

**-o-**

More than once in the past few years, watching Ichigo and Uryuu grow and become involved in the world on the Shinigami and a bloody war, Ryuuken has wondered where his and Isshin's parenting skills have gone wrong, that their children are battling to right their wrongs.

(He knows perfectly well where Isshin's parenting has gone wrong – the moment, he began to pay less attention to his children and became consumed with mourning for Masaki. Now he has a son fighting the forefront of a war that doesn't have anything to do with him, a daughter who is very clearly aware of her brother's situation and wishing to help, and a daughter who…

a daughter who is a greater Quincy prodigy than her own mother, and Ryuuken isn't sure how comfortable he is with the fact that he is training her. Nevermind the fact that the young girl has made use of the war as a way to distract everyone from her own training and growing powers.)

**-o-**

The first time Yuzu successfully uses her _Blut_, the war has been over for two months, she has been twelve all of five hours, and Ryuuken is impressed at how much the girl has progressed amidst the war and her schooling and family in the five short months he's been training her.

(And isn't that just typical Isshin, having a genius under his roof and being absolutely unaware of it, to the point where he thinks the girl can't even see spirits.)

Yuzu is tired, but happy, as she turns to her mentor with a smile after weeks of practicing with no results, and for the first time ever, gets a smile in return. Ryuuken doesn't say it at the time, but her _Blut Vene_ is almost on par with what Masaki's had been, and from someone who has only been aware of it for a few short years, it is a terrifying thought.

**-o-**

(Sometimes, Ryuuken becomes melancholy and thinks of lost opportunities, of forks in the road, of the children he and Masaki could've had, or the way the war might have gone differently had a genius such as Yuzu – because the kid is a prodigy if he's ever seen one, just like her brother but with a different strength – been available. On these days, he ends up sleeping on the couch, waking up to find a blanket placed over him, no doubt left by Uryuu, and is then consumed by guilt.)

**-o-**

Yuzu is never entirely sure why she decided to hide her abilities from her family. Ishida-san has never asked, only complied with her wishes. She knows her family thinks she has no spiritual power, and originally she was trying to fulfill her role of being the normal one, the caretaker. Due to her family's dismissal, the rest of their group – the Shinigami, the Vizard, those from Urahara's Shop – assume the same, and merrily keep her in the dark.

Perhaps she is merely being slightly vengeful at their quest to keep her ignorant, but she is not entirely sure that this is the case. Part of it, certainly, is her being vindictive, because Yuzu has always been mature enough to admit to it, but there is something else.

Something that screams at her from within that she has to protect her family and their friends, but she doesn't know from what.

(She will soon find out, and miss her days of ignorance.)

**-o-**

When Yuzu is thirteen, she notices her brother has regained his Shinigami powers. She does not know the particulars, as she was away on an archery competition at the time. All she finds out is that Ichigo got hurt, her family got hurt, and she is so mad because she could have _protected them_-

Yuzu stops. She reconsiders. Quirks her lips over the stovetop as she cooks dinner, wondering when she mentally became not only caretaker but also protector. Probably when she discovered her own potential.

(Because Ishida-san won't say it, but she knows from the mans gaze and expressions which she has learned to read like the mathematical formulas at school that her progress far surpasses that of the average Quincy. Not that she is surprised. She has always been top of her class.)

When Yuzu is thirteen, her hair is longer and she still works at the hospital after school, much to her father's grievance as he wishes she'd work in the clinic instead.

When Yuzu is thirteen, she has a strange dream. She is in an open field, surrounded by skeletons and dead trees. A man in a cape and military outfit, with long black hair and a cape is before her, sitting on a throne over skulls and bones. She stares up at him, all of thirteen, confused but expecting some sort of explanation. The man stares back, and his eyebrows raise slightly at her unflinching gaze, before he snorts. He stands up, and approaches her, but Yuzu holds her ground, doesn't flinch or step back. It is an imposing figure before her, towering over her teenage frame, but Yuzu has genius, and her mother's necklace and her Quincy skills, so she is not afraid.

"So you awakened your abilities after the purge? Damn Kurosakis, always getting one up on me," the man states. The man's voice is deep and commanding, the voice of someone who is used to being obeyed without question, and it resonates in the empty clearing they are in.

Yuzu stares back, eyebrows raised.

Suddenly, the man throws his head back and laughs, long and hard, and it sounds more like he is choking on crushed glass than a laugh, but that is all it can be. He stops just as suddenly as he began, once more centering his gaze on the small girl before him.

"Yeah, you're a special one alright kid, I won't even bother making the offer, you lot don't like playing by the rules anyway…you'll make things interesting at any rate," with a flourish of his cape, the man turns and climbs back up to his throne, and says to seemingly no one, "mark down one Kurosaki, Yuzu as a special war interest,"

When she is thirteen, Yuzu wakes up in a cold sweat from the strangest dream she has ever had, and hugs herself. While the man had done nothing to harm her, and she had held her ground, Yuzu knows that a large part of it was an inability to move in the face of his might. Because she is a smart kid, and she can recognize when someone strong, ridiculously strong in this case, is standing before her.

Not thinking about it, Yuzu throws on a jack and shoes and jogs to Ishida-san's place. Unsurprisingly, the man is awake. Uryuu has been missing for a few days, and he is nervous, although he'd never admit it. She knocks on his window, and as soon as he sees her, she says,

"We need to talk,"

**-o-**

It is three weeks later, and Yuzu has strong-armed both her father and Urahara-san (not Karin, never Karin, because Karin _must be protected_) into divulging everything they know to her. To say that they are surprised would be a gross understatement. Neither man comprehends that a thirteen-year-old girl is calmly revealing an attack plan "so long as you two will provide the information I need to do so". She enlists the remaining Vizard, who take a somewhat instant liking to her for reasons unknown (but then again, Yuzu has always known how to play the social game effectively, her flabbergasted father thinks absently) and anyone else who is around, including several Arrancar (who also seem smitten with the girl, but _goddammit_ Isshin feels like a absolute fool - he has clearly missed something that has been in front of his nose all these years, after all no one normal can make Ryuuken like them, certainly not his daughter were she a normal child).

As she is updated on the situation in Seireitei and develops a battle plan with an easy that absolutely terrifies Isshin but interests Urahara as she coerces everyone to reveal their own plans and hidden truths, Ryuuken steps into the Shop, drawing everyone's attention.

He takes one look at the ragtag crew before him, all surrounding Masaki's prodigal daughter, who is bent over a map, the only one so accustomed to his presence she has always labeled him a friendly and can thus safely ignore him. When she looks up at him, a calm smile on her face, Ryuuken can only think _Masaki_.

"Thank you for coming, Ishida-san, I trust you brought your weapon with you? We are going to war, after all," she says, as if she were talking to a patient or asking him about a Quincy technique she hasn't fully grasped yet but will in the next few hours.

"Why?" Ryuuken replies, because he has to make sure that he has respected Masaki's memory, his own family's memory, to make sure that he has not trained a monster because she can be terrifying more than anyone in the room knows with how strong she is-

"To protect people, of course," she answers naturally, without skipping a beat, and Ryuuken visibly relaxes, as he did not get the answer he was afraid he might, the one he might give were he in her position (_to kill the bastard that killed Masaki)_, and nods.

(Ryuuken will never tell anyone, but he is incredibly relieved that Isshin's parenting wasn't a total loss, if some of Masaki's philosophy came through.

Yuzu, of course, being the innate genius that she is, knows this.)

* * *

_Towards the end of Homer's **Odyssey**, the matter of Odysseus' identity is settled through a contest with a bow, a shot that only Odysseus himself could make, and proposed by his faithful wife, Penelope, who may very well have already discovered his identity (although this is debated). The question, of course, is what would have happened had Penelope taken the initiative at the beginning of the arrival of the suitors, perhaps not as outwardly as a man given the time period, but as a woman who is in charge of household. What would have happened, indeed, had Penelope taken the bow, and proven she could quite easily take care of herself and protect what was hers?_

* * *

thanks for reading, comments are appreciated.


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